


Just A Name (What A Coward I Was)

by Oodles



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-13 23:46:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7143395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oodles/pseuds/Oodles





	Just A Name (What A Coward I Was)

Eames is just a name. Letters on a page. I joked once and told you  _ after tonight you’ll forget your own name _ , but you’ll always come back to yourself. You know you’re Arthur. You only lie about your last name. The rest is all real. I made myself from scratch, from things just laying around. There are no mirrors in my house. You hate it, not that you’ve been there many times. Twice, maybe. I never told you it was mine. 

I want you all the time. When we’re apart, sometimes for months, sometimes for years, I see you like a projection, just out of reach, too dangerous to disturb, but really it’s just my eyes tricking me. You don’t make yourself hard to find, and I know where to go to avoid you, because I can’t stand being around you. How solid you are, how settled in your ways. I’m jealous of my predictable Arthur. But I come crawling back without fail.

I bend to you. 

I break for you. 

With your hands in my hair, I remember who I am. 

Without your steady hand, I’m just a shadow. 

Do you think you could love a man with no name?

Every time you show me something new, I learn it, I memorize it, I need it. When you let me knot your tie. The way you take your coffee. How you unbutton my shirt, push it off my shoulder, run your fingers down my tattoo, like it’s new, every time. Then I shiver, and tip my head back and you kiss my neck. 

And when we fuck, I fall right back into the dream. Because it can’t be real, the way you are, the impression you leave in me, that Arthur shaped space.

I know myself by knowing you. 

You asked me once how I was able to do this so easily, just become another person, and I told you it was like slipping on a new suit. All you have to do is tailor it to you. Then it fits to your body well enough that you can pretend. 

What a coward I was. 

I didn’t tell you that every face I steal, every body I impersonate, the tics I adopt, it takes something out of me, like a photograph that captures your soul. Little by little, I forget who I am. I never minded, thought twice, until you asked. But that’s what you do. You press. I push. We fight. Then we forget.

The things we do to impress each other, the lengths we go to, the people we mold. When I work with you, when I’m in your dream, I don’t tell you, but I search for the projection of myself in your head. I want to know how you dress me, how you see me, how you make me walk. But you keep me hidden deep. 

Sometimes I’m scared to let you in because I know one day you’ll find there’s nothing there but scraped together sentiments from half-forgotten dreams. Playing you classical music and watching you arch your back. Screaming at you to get the hell out of my room. Leveling the barrel of a gun to your head to wake you up. 

I toss that name around for free, to anyone who asks, but when I hear it in your voice, I can almost pretend that it’s me. I’d lie, cheat, and steal just to hear that damn name on your lips, with just a touch of need sprinkled like sugar, like salt. 

I can tell from the way you handle me, careful and unsteady at the same time, that I am the only one you do this with. 

You know me too well. 

The first time was chance. The second time was luck. The third time we were animals. I haven’t recovered since. 

You tracked me down in Germany once just to tell me that you wanted to drive me around in your car. You wanted to speed with me in your passenger seat. You took me for a ride and I took you in the backseat, one of the few times I set the pace, because you felt lost that day. I built you back up, as you destroyed me. 

Par for the course, darling.

You took a pseudonym and made it a name. 

You get angry with me when I run from you. I do it for the illusion of us. We’re not real, but we can fake it with the best of them. We’ll never be what we want to be. We chose this life, but we didn’t choose each other. We fell into each other’s minds and left pieces of ourselves behind, like splinters in the brain. 

It hurts to be with you. It hurts more to ignore you. 

Fucking in hotel rooms, lying about where we live, where we’re headed next, when we’ll meet again. 

God, when you’re inside me, and I shout at you, your real name, and you think to shut me up, but we both know I’m craving it, and you love my voice, don’t you? You love making me loud, just as much as I love giving you orders, and kicking out your chair and tasting every part of your body. 

I told you to dream bigger. 

And yet here you are.

I can’t say no to you. 

You’ve started to see the cracks, haven’t you? That’s why you’re here. It was that last job. It took something from you too, the same way every job takes from me. Only this time, you’re the one who’s asking for it. 

Help. 

Though not in so many letters.

I let you in, I make you a drink, you ignore it. 

You loosen your tie, you take off your jacket, I hang it up for you. 

You stare at the floor and I know you’re tracing the lines of the hideous patterned carpet, because your mind needs those patterns. It needs something to break. You toe at the table and lift your head again. 

This is the part when you make small talk and then I tease you and then we have a petty fight and fall into our routine. 

“Eames.”

I stare at you. 

You slide a little closer. Your gaze is heavy on me. We’re skipping steps. You put your hand on my knee. You must want this. Maybe as badly as I do. 

Are you buzzing inside? Is your brain blocking out everything except me? Does your skin itch for contact? Do you smell my cologne? 

I can taste you already.

You touch my face, hesitant, like I might run from you– which, I suppose, is a fair concern. But this time, I lean into you. You slide a thumb over my jaw, and something about the friction of your skin against the shadow of hair is dizzying.  

We both give up at the same time, closing the distance, pressing our lips together. I go soft at your touch, when you run your hands across my shirt and reach for the buttons. You’re faster this time, you ignore the tattoo, you go back for a kiss, a long one. You pin me to the arm of the couch and kiss me again and again, each more forceful than the last until you’re straddling me and holding me hostage with your mouth.

I don’t mind.

While you’re distracted, I undo your tie. I drop it to the floor, something you’d never let me do, taking full advantage of your focus on my face. But as I try to take your shirt off, you surprise me again, loosening your hold. Your tongue lightly touches my lips and I forget what I’m doing, realizing that all the matters is letting you in. 

Forgetting and learning all over again. That’s what we do. 

Repeat the cycle. 

Wake up, go to sleep, return to the dream. 

“Eames,” you breathe the name onto my skin and give it a home. 

I feel like I’m falling as you remove the rest of my clothes, slower now, lips all over me, taking ownership back. But I was never not yours. When I’m naked, you lay your hands on my chest. One hand goes up, the other goes down. Your finger in my mouth, your hand between my legs, your eyes squarely on mine. I lean into your touch and your head falls to the side a little, studying. Am I that fascinating to you? Even after all these years. 

I start to lose track. I think I say your name. Then you’re on me, you’re in me. You’re splitting me open and cataloguing the pieces. You don’t miss a single thing. You always had an eye for detail. You take me at your weakest, your hardest, your most honest. 

I forged you a man out of nothing. 

You gave him a name. 

You watch me rise, you watch me peak, you watch me crumble. 

You kiss my forehead and say it one more time. 

“Eames.”

Don’t you see it now?

Nothing alike. Two of a kind. 

Always waiting for the next dream. 

My Arthur. 

Don’t wake me yet.


End file.
